Hey All!

So It has been a hot minute since I have had the chance to post anything on this lovely blog of ours. Seems like every time I have the opportunity of doing so, things like sleep get in the way of my thoughts and punctuations. This time is quite different as I would feel way too guilty if I didn’t share our latest journey with all of you. As some of you may know me and the gang got the chance to visit the land down under better known as, *Australia* this past week for a short promo tour. We had the chance of seeing Sydney, Melbourne and a bit of Brisbane on this trip, which included, a few radio shows, some photo shoots, Morning TV, two city shows (or sideshows as they are called in Aus) and a festival called, “Splendor In The Grass” which goes down in a little country town just outside of Brisbane. The first two days were spent in Sydney, the 3rd or 4th most expensive city in the world! I am not even going to get into how much money I spent on cab fare alone! I’ll save that for later….Moving on…

We arrived on July 25th, after the day 1/2 plane ride from LA that took place on the 23rd, at approximately 6:15am. Bright eyed and bushy tailed (NOT) some of us decided that we should go sightseeing as to play the game of staying awake to beat the jet-lag which in our case was pretty inevitable being that we had skipped an entire day! We were determined little soldiers!! Myself, Joe, Lisa & Fitz decided to boldly go where no cool Angelino had gone before by booking a ride on a little red bus called, Sightseeing Tours! Yes, the same little bus we gasp at every time we see it going up the Hollywood Hills in slow motion with it’s sounds of the overhead speaker giving historic information on homes and the celebrities that no longer live in them. Okay, it wasn’t as painful on this trip but you get the idea. Sydney was a whopping 62 degrees that day, as on the other side of the world it is now their winter (talk about a time warp). We decided we should really get the whole experience of our tour so we opted to sit on the balcony seating of the bus, with the open air and the view of the city. After 20 minutes of riding around we decided that our $35 dollar booking on the bus was better spent and better absorbed by us just walking it on our own. We got off in Circular Quay in order to view one of Sydney’s most popular architectural Awes, Sydney Opera House designed by danish architect Jørn Utzon. The Opera House is placed in a really breathtaking location right on the water across from the Harbor Bridge (Coat Hanger Bridge) which was a pretty amazing scene at night and in the day. We walked all around the Opera House for what seemed like hours being wooed by all of it’s lovely surroundings, and then decided to check out the rest of the city. We walked through Hyde Park, and visited St Patrick’s Cathedral, passed through the Barracks Museum that was built in the late 1800s to house the convicts that pretty much held the work load of building this lovely city. Later we found ourselves meandering around Oxford Street passing through the red light district of Sydney’s Kings Cross, and cruising the shops on Crowne Street just before Surry Hills, then later in the famous Botanical Gardens where we made wishes at the wishing tree, and were entertained by massive amounts of Bats and Cockatoo’s. Sydney reminded me a lot of Los Angeles and NY in its vibe. All the people we’d met were pretty easy going, it was strange to be in another country and not feel so foreign. After our lovely afternoon we went back to the hotel roughly round 6 and my head hit the pillow at 745pm it was lights out till 4am~!

The next day Fitz and I had a 830am lobby call for a 5 hour long photo shoot that required lots of care under the eyes as to hide the sacks of tiredness appearing below them. We later met up with the band for our first Radio performance in Aus at, ABC Dig which is similar to our NPR or Britain’s BBC Radio, it was held a beautiful studio space with a grand piano and lot’s of space for James to Blow his horn without deafening us . By this time our Jet-lag was really starting to kick in, but we powered through with 5 lattes a piece and delivered 3 successful live recordings for the Dig Crew. The evening ended with a lovely meal at a spot called Ms. G’s on Victoria Street, for you New York heads out there Ms. G’s, is pretty much what Momofuku is to Manhattan. There were plates of prawns, pork belly sandwiches, braised duck noodles, Kimchi and all kinds of yummy asian inspired deserts going around the table. We sucked in a bit of the Aussie humor and made plays at our own versions of their accents, then retired to our cozy beds for yet another 4am rise and fall. Our third day in Sydney would be our first official concert night. Like the day before, we kicked it off early with press making our way to the Aussie version of Regis & Cathy Lee at Channel 7 for the Morning Show performed 1 song (you can check out that performance here on our site) then took the rest of the afternoon off. This time myself and Jeremy hit the Sydney Aquarium which was pretty magical. I have posted some photos below, I am not joking when I say that I think the tortoise was the size of a small country and I swear he/she was posing for me every time I lifted my IPhone to get at shot of him/her. Later that night we geared up for our show at, The Basement in the Circular Quay, an area of Sydney walking distance from The Opera House, and the chic shopping area of George Street. The Basement favored The Belly Up in Aspen, a lower level club under the city, filled with mahogany wood floors and banisters housed a round this Pub style bar. The walls were lined with portraits of Miles Davis and other jazz greats next to the small stage that held the 6 of us just above the standing room floor. We played an hour and a half set in front of roughly 180+ enthused Australians who surprisingly enough knew most of the words to every song. It was a great night indeed, we packed our gear around 12 and headed back to the hotel with feelings of glee about our mid morning wake up call, this night I slept till 8.

Off to Melbourne we go! What a cool city it was, kind of mixture of New York, Dallas, and Bristol UK all rolled into one gigantic city. The thing about Melbourne that was different from Sydney I found, was that everything seemed to be built into allies and side streets not really visible if just driving by, Chapman Street was the exception to this (Think Broadway in NY). One really has to know where they are going in order to find the cool places in Melbourne, and the weather was a bit more biting than the winter weather of Sydney. All and all Melbourne was a cool town our first day here was a bit more mellow and started later in the afternoon. We had to fly there and arrived roughly around 1 pm before our interviews we had a moment to eat at a cute little Cafe called, Milkwood where I managed to polish off a 3 stack of ricotta pancakes topped with toasted coconut and bananas and still have room for half of Jeremy’s poached eggs with corn cakes, oh yeah and two lattes. After our meal we headed over to Triple R radio and the boys took part in what seemed to be an hour long interview, while that was taking place me and 2 of the boys where rushed off to get set up for a live performance we were doing for an online network called, The Undercover Network. They had 8 people with hand held cameras, a few boom microphones and a little audio table set up outside in this cobble stoned ally. We performed Money Grabber and Don’t gotta work it out stripped down under the beautiful sun. After that was wrapped up Fitz, James and I headed to our last interview of the day with The Vine, and then headed back to the hotel. I took off with our Tour manager and Driver and they showed me a bit of the Melbourne Night life and culture, there were cocktails, Russian tapas, the theater, more cocktails and of course desserts involved in this adventure.

Day two in Melbourne started at 9am. We grabbed our flat whites and lattes and headed over to Radio ABC 774 for a live acoustic performance, then later took a caravan over to Chapel Street where we would prep our gear for our 2nd concert in Aus. at Red Bennies. This venue was pretty amazing, it seems there has been a surge of Speakeasy style establishments popping up in Melbourne, and this is the coolest. Red Bennies It looked like a set taken straight out of Dick Tracey. The stage was small decorated with an art deco club logo placed at the crown of the arch lined with red velvet curtains to each side. There were two bars, a small balcony and a smoking patio displayed behind large glass windows. The lighting kept dim with candles and pin light and the crowd came dressed in their best looks ready to play. We had another fantastic show, and the people of Melbourne showed us a lot of love, this time we had roughly 200+ many of the attendees had just run across our video on you tube, or heard us on the local station. It was all love! Our last night in Melbourne was short on the after hours as we had to be up at 5am to catch our flight to what would be our last performance of our short promo tour, Splendor In The Grass.

Now with Splendor I have to be honest, everything was a blur for me personally. We were soooo exhausted still battling the war of jet-lag that I think we were all in a bit of a dream state. We were moving at a slowed down pace and our schedule of activities were in quick time!!! First things first was the drive up to the country side where Splendor was taking place. It was landscape was lush with golds and greens, the sunlight hit just perfectly over all the trees on the way there and suddenly we were in this open field climbing up a hill in our bus to get to the artist tent. We were escorted to our dressing area and had about 5 seconds before Fitz and I were rushed off for our on-air interview with Triple J radio, and some Mug Shots for the stations Magazine. I later conducted a pretty intimate interview with a popular women’s magazine called, Yen Magazine that I will be sharing with you soon. After a couple hours of hang time we got ready to perform our set at this grand festival a bit nervous on if we would have a good crowd being that we were so new to the world of Aus… The curtain opened and we found ourselves standing in front of a pretty full tent of about 2500-3000 ppl. I guess the buzz about us caught on cause in that crowd were a small but mighty group of fans that were singing a long to us in the front. Like all of the shows we’d had on this trip, the energy we got from the crowd participants was that of what we get here at home. It was a blessing to be on the other side of the world and still have the same impact.

Our Journey together ended there in Woodforia and a few of us went our separate ways to travel around Aus. My choice was to return to Sydney where I will let my photos give you a peek into that adventure. Thank you all again for reading!

xoxo

Noelle

Hey All. I thought this would be easier to do as this footage from our interview with Faceculture.com in Holland was broken into 5 Parts. I figured I would just give you all one link for the Parts. This is one of our most in depth interviews Fitz and I have done thus far, we really had a great time sharing our story.

Thank you so much for spending your time with us!

Enjoy,

xoxo Noelle & Fitz

Noelle & Fitz with Faceculture Part 1

Noelle & Fitz with Faceculture Part 2

Noelle & Fitz with Faceculture Part 3

Noelle & Fitz with Faceculture Part 4

Noelle & Fitz with Faceculture Part 5